Happy New Year! Exciting news! Stephen has signed a contract with Discovery Publisher for the fantasy novel he wrote in 2025: THE ZEN TIME TRAVELER: A Pilgrim’s Journey Through the Koans. The book is due out in June, 2026! You can go to the Discovery Publisher website to see what sort of books they offer. THE ZEN TIME TRAVELER fits comfortably in their catalog of publications. The editor at Discovery Publisher suggested the fanciful title and has provided detailed and imaginative guidance for another draft before publication.
This contract is the most exciting event for Stephen in the writing world since he sold an idea and treatment to Disney’s Animated Feature Division with writer/director John Harrison in 2005. It’s gratifying and satisfying to have a bit of late-in-life success now.
The book is going to be translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and perhaps German and other languages later. There will also be a hardcover version of the book. These are all firsts for Stephen, who has always been a “paperback writer.”
Without giving too much away, here’s a short synopsis of THE ZEN TIME TRAVELER:
A haiku poem magically transports Zen student Stephen Maine to 13th-century China where he encounters Chan (Zen) masters, experiences koans firsthand, and begins a romance with beautiful sword maker Yabaku that threatens to upend his present-day marriage and keep him in the 13th century, where he shares the body of a wandering Japanese monk named Wùkōng who also has designs on Yabaku and turns out to be an important figure in the history of Zen.
As many of you undoubtedly know, koans are the short, often nonsensical and comical stories that Zen Buddhist teachers use to jar their students out of rational thinking and into a fresh new view of the world. Well-known examples are ones like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “What did your face look like before your parents were born?” Stephen drew from thousands of koans in collections such as The Blue Cliff Record, the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate), The Book of Equanimity, The Iron Flute, and others. He strung together more than seventy koans into a picaresque adventure tale that ranges across the mountains, rivers and plains of ancient Song Dynasty China. Stephen Maine, the protagonist of THE ZEN TIME TRAVELER, bounces back and forth between this historical setting and his life in modern day Massachusetts. It’s a wild ride!
Stephen and Bela will have a book-signing party in Deerfield sometime in late June and hope to repeat the kind of marketing effort they made for their self-published novel Pilgrim Maya, with book reviews, podcasts, newspaper articles, and bookstore signings. They won’t repeat their epic 9,000-mile 30-day jaunt around the country (September of 2022). Instead, Stephen will do a West Coast swing, starting in Seattle, and working his way down the coast to Portland, San Francisco, Santa Barbara/Ojai, and Los Angeles.
Here’s hoping you will all love the book. As with all Stephen’s writing, it’s a labor of love and not done for fame or money, but because Stephen wants to make a small contribution to healing the world, whether through a haiku or a novel like THE ZEN TIME TRAVELER. Stephen is not a Zen priest, Roshi, or any other kind of Zen teacher or figure of authority. He’s a fantasy writer with a Zen practice at Boundless Way Zen in Northampton, Massachusetts. Stephen always considers himself a Zen beginner, and a pilgrim wandering through a life of writing and Zen.
Many of you have supported Stephen in various ways. He has gotten critical review and input from writers and other friends and has identified as many people as he could on the Acknowledgments page. He’s received encouragement from many other people, including those in the Boundless Way Zen sangha, the Shintaido community, and friends at large. Most of all, Stephen thanks his wife Bela, always his in-house editor, and sometimes his coauthor.
Thanks again to everyone who has supported Stephen and Bela and their “literary marriage.”